Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday October 12, 2009 @09:02PM
from the brown-to-green dept.

Hugh Pickens writes:"The Daily Climate reports that President Obama and Congress are pushing to identify thousands of contaminated landfills and abandoned mines — 'brownfields' that could be repurposed to house wind farms, solar arrays, and geothermal power plants. Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. 'In the next decade there's going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,' said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society. 'We don't want to see these industrial facilities placed on land that's pristine. We love the idea of brownfields for renewable energy development because it relieves the (development) pressure on undisturbed places. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable for wind and solar power development, as well as biomass. Included are 5 million acres suitable for photovoltaic or concentrated solar power development, and 500,000 acres for wind power. These sites, if fully developed, have the potential to produce 950,000 megawatts — more than the country's total power needs in 2007, according to EPA data."

If one used the spare power to transmute the nuclear waste into useful non-radioactive materials then it wouldn't be "waste" anymore. The concept that the U.S. is power limited is completely false. A recent PNAS paper showed that the U.S. could supply 14x its *entire* electricity production using only high value wind power sites. Use the extra electricity to transmute the nuclear waste and one of the entire arguments against nuclear power disappears [1]. Then it becomes a simple economic discussion as to whether its better to build remote wind farms and superconducting cables to make the power available at distant cities, or build nuclear reactors closer to the cities where one could take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure. If you want to give a gift to ones children start thinking in terms of "free" green energy.

1. Also worth noting is that either laser or tokamak fusion power might come into the mix over the next decade. But that doesn't minimize the advantages in U.S. jobs and infrastructure that would result from building up wind, tidal & solar generating capacity as well as superconducting transmission infrastructure. What is required is to break the coal, oil & gas monopoly mindset. If its taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere it is *not* sustainable. Not unless your definition of "sustainable" involves killing off a lot of species and a fair number of humans.

Has anybody looked into what "harvesting" all this wind is gonna do to the environment? I'm all for trying out new ideas and definitely think we should be doing everything to get rid of coal, but I also remember my history. After all, in the the 20th century we thought building millions of combustion engines was just hunky dory since it all just went "poof" into the wild blue yonder, and some moron thought it was a great idea to bring African bees to Brazil and Kudzu to the south, and those ideas turned out

And we've already taken out not-quite-as-insignificantly small chunks by building billions of houses.

This is nothing compared to the opposite effect from all the wind-absorbing trees we've cut down in order to make room for those houses, lawns, pastures, roads, parking lots, etc.

On a windy day, compare walking in a big city to walking in a forest. When it comes to wind abatement, smooth-sided, rigid buildings have nothing on trees, with their nice, fractal, flexible shapes. The same goes for windmills --

I believe there have been studies done on wind extraction and don't remember the concerns being very significant. The problem with wind, tidal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, geothermal, space power, etc. is that they all shift the energy flow equation for the planet. However I believe humanity is still such a small part (~16 terawatts) of that equation (and will be until we are at 0.01 x Kardachev-Type-I civilization energy level (which is ~170 petawatts) so that our impact gets lost in the noise. The mos

Part of the problem is being precise enough. "Molecular nanotechnology" does exist in the form of every enzyme which catalyzes a reaction in biochemistry. All of the DNA polymerases, RNA polymerases and the Ribosome can be considered "limited purpose" nanoassemblers in that they assemble multiple components into larger molecular aggregates which form more complex structures (genomes, ribosomal, messenger and transfer RNA and all proteins). What is missing is a 4-8 million atom complete general purpose mo

Part of the problem is being precise enough. "Molecular nanotechnology" does exist in the form of every enzyme which catalyzes a reaction in biochemistry.

That is an incorrect use of language. "Technology" is, by definition, artificially constructed.

One can understand the vision and understand the path toward achieving it without knowing all of the details. Your argument is nothing more than another way of saying "Everything is easy once you know how to do it."

Has anybody looked into what "harvesting" all this wind is gonna do to the environment?

Yes.

With solar I have much less concern since that sunlight is just gonna hit the ground anyway

That's ridiculous. Either way you're interfering with energy. That sunlight is now not going to heat the ground, which stores that heat energy to a greater degree than some solar panels. If you're concerned about wind, you should be concerned about solar. The amount of energy intercepted and where it's not going are both relevant.

But with all this talk of the entire planet harvesting wind I don't think I've seen so much as a single study on what taking the large chunks of energy out of the wind will do to our planet.

The jet stream is powered by the conveyor which is powered by thermal differentials in ice masses. If the ice melts (as it is doing!) then the conveyor, the single largest ocea

Has anybody looked into what "harvesting" all this wind is gonna do to the environment?

Yep.

It's about like letting a forest grow. Slows the wind down a little bit near the surface. Eases erosion nearby. Does diddly-squat to the weather. (A little more nucleation and turbulence - far less than building a city on the site.)

With solar I have much less concern since that sunlight is just gonna hit the ground anyway,...

And maybe half of it bounce back into the sky at the original frequency (depending on the

In the meantime sustainable sources of harvesting energy like solar, wind, geo-thermal and wave/tidal are a necessary development to creating the right mix for meeting energy needs. It is essential that an infrastructure plan is developed for a geologically stable spent

Fusion power has been "adecade away" for 30 years. Stop counting on it.

Moreover, nuclear waste cannot be broken down, you have to wait an eon or two for it to transmute into something else (aka wait 3 half-lives or more). Of course, it could be recycled in breeder or CANDU reactors [wikipedia.org], but I digress.

Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat.

I used to work in toxics cleanup and I think that's a brilliant idea. A lot of hazardous materials are more risk to dig up than just leave alone. That would put the land to some practical use and restore value to the surrounding communities, many of which were blighted by the proximity to the contamination (whether justified by actual exposure risk or not). And, oh by the way, turn that otherwise unusable ground into jobs and non-polluting energy.

So whatever led to the consideration of these sites, it's a winner. The fact no one will seriously be able to challenge the site selection on environmental grounds will simply speed getting the shovels into the ground.

It's a technical term that sets off the property rights wingnuts. These are the "it's my property and I can do whatever I want to it, even if it causes cancer for 10,000 years" people. Those people often are behind fixing "contaminated sites" but when they hear brownfield, they picture someone spilling 8oz of diesel in their strip mall parking lot and having to pay $15,000,000 to tear out the parking lot, remove 20ft of topsoil and then replace the parking lot... and pay lawyers.

The flip side of this, is those that profited by polluting the land in question will inevitably use lobbyists to inflate the price paid for the land where it matches the value of adjoining unpolluted and leave all that pollution behind. Either the contaminated land is already government land or the polluters pay to clean it up. This just sounds like another greedy arsholes dream to dump worthless land onto the taxpayer at enormous profit.

Except once the toxic waste starts leaching off the, now government owned site and they have to dismantle the solar/wind farm in order to clean up the site, all at public expense of course. So environmental impact statement to prove the pollutants will not leave the site through natural processes, be it wind or ground water movement, second the property should have a nil or negative value to take into account it's true non-existent value, thirdly if the property is only borderline and there are substantial

The fact no one will seriously be able to challenge the site selection on environmental grounds will simply speed getting the shovels into the ground.

You should look into the rehabilitation of contaminated sites before stating anything quite so strongly. The undesirability of contaminated land can make it environmentally valuable and worth protecting. Environmental grounds for legal argument aren't nearly as limited as you're pretending.

The only downside I see to this is that construction costs are going to be higher. For a couple of reasons. These brown sites will by nature of them be farther way from existing infrastructure resulting in higher costs to send both materials and labor to the location. Also there will need to be extra safety precatuions taken for the labourers and the waste from the zones.

All in all it may be a good idea or may not. I hope it turns out to be economically beneficial for all.

These brown sites will by nature of them be farther way from existing infrastructure resulting in higher costs to send both materials and labor to the location.

Actually, there are quite a lot of urban sites as well. In fact, I drove past one [epa.gov] just last week. Remember, too, that infrastructure spreads to follow and/or lead suburban sprawl. Yesterday's isolated dumping ground is today's fashionable gated community.

These brown sites will by nature of them be farther way from existing infrastructure resulting in higher costs to send both materials and labor to the location.

Precisely the opposite. If you RTFM, you'll see that the listed benefits include: power transmission lines are often already available on site (leftover from the site's previous use), and the sites are often located in areas with depressed economies (read: readily available labor from nearby towns, that used to be employed by the old site)

Who would want to work there? It's a good thing we'll probably get national health care, because the construction workers are gonna need it when their thyroid glands swell up to the size of a cantaloupe.

There are people lining up to work at oil drilling sites/refineries, nuclear plants, paper mills, all kinds of shitty places.

And its go boys goThey'll time your every breathAnd every day in this place your two days near to deathBut you go

Well a process man am I and I'm tellin' you no lieI work and breathe among the fumes that tread across the skyThere's thunder all around me and there's poison in the airThere's a lousy smell that smacks of hell and dust all in me hair

Isn't one of the selling points supposed to be lower maintenance costs? But really, doesn't that get wiped out, or at least compromised, by the higher employment cost of sending crews into contaminated sites that are still waiting for clean-up? And if the site clean-up is in progress, wouldn't that drive up the maintenance crews' costs up even higher?

Building on top of a brownfield might do little to stop its contents from percolating into groundwater. (Actually, it might do something at that, simply by diverting rain that would otherwise fall onto and into it.)

I'm all for putting otherwise-unusable land to good use, but we'd need to have legal structures to protect everyone involved, so (for example) the company building the energy installation isn't suddenly on the hook for everything lurking under it.

Most of the brownfields, by their very definitions, are either in or close to suburbia. Basically, by putting up wind, Solar PV|thermal, or possibly geo-thermal, these will generate power CLOSE to consumption. In addition, many of these sites already had high tension lines being brought in. Generally, a brownfield was a previous manufacturing site that used loads of electricity. So, with high tension lines already there, the increased costs of build-out as well as maintenance may be far less than doing a new site located 20-50 miles away.

Not if it's properly regulated. You feed the same voltage as the existing lines. If your available power drops, then you supply less current and the original feed picks up the load. Only big concern I see is it would affect voltages where average line drop was calculated into the transformer choices.

Water turbines are run at a given speed to produce a given voltage and frequency. But all this other stuff is not. Every other kind of generator is typically regulated to produce a given voltage and frequency. Solar produces DC, so you have to convert to AC for transmission (or HVDC, but let's set that aside for the moment) and you just gang panels to get the voltage you need. This is truly a non-issue; these power plants ALREADY put out power at a fairly steady voltage. Only the current falls. Learn more,

"The Daily Climate reports that President Obama and Congress are pushing to identify thousands of contaminated landfills and abandoned mines -- 'brownfields' that could be repurposed to house wind farms, solar arrays, and geothermal power plants. Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. 'In the next decade there's going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,' said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society.

That's all well and good for the ducks, but what about landowners who have invested good money and hosted dozens of elbow-rubbing parties over the years to develop a relationship with congresspeople and senators? How are they supposed to get the government to buy their $60 per acre swampland for $2500 per acre? Reusing land the government has already paid for severely depresses the corrupt real estate deal market, with nothing more to show for it than reduced public spending.

Those sites aren't dead, you know! They are the breeding grounds for all kinds of different mutations, including the six-legged common redneckus monstrosius and the beautiful giant caterfly.How can you just sit there and plan building power plants on the homes of those poor mutants?

Did you just read the summary, and think "hey - that's good news!". I just did. Then doubt began to set in. What it is actually saying is that industry crapped on so much land, that if we built windmills on it we could power the whole of the US. It does not say that they could afford the windmills, or were going to build them. No power, no windmills, just a huge amount of crapped-on land and some hope. At least, the healing may have started.

There are two dirty secrets that the environmental movement does not like to talk about or engage in because either it is not politically correct among the politically correct or they do not gain much in the way of donations and support for it.

1. Population control. God for bid we would encourage people to have less Children as a way to help the environment.

2. Cleaning up a place that is already spoiled (not talking about picking up trash in the national park). Yes, there is some of this that goes on, but f

1. Population control. God for bid we would encourage people to have less Children as a way to help the environment.

You are a liar. I am from Santa Cruz, which is one of the most hippie'd up towns in All Creation. The environmentalists have been preaching zero or negative population growth since before I was born.

2. Cleaning up a place that is already spoiled (not talking about picking up trash in the national park).

You fight battles you can win. There are many such sites right in the middle of populated areas [nytimes.com] which are not being cleaned up because they are not being designated superfund sites for economic reasons, and selfish bullshit ones at that. But that's not the fault of the environmental movement, and they do in fact

I remember putting forward a thesis in an old GIS class that was a bit too grand for the time I was able to spend flwshing out the particulars, but it was essentially to start creating a map layer for the North America (yes Canada and Mexico too, cuz pollution travels no?) that we could then query for whole categories of pollutants and land use restrictions. One purpose was to make the data saleable to insurance industry for rate adjustments (yes they screw people over for where they live, but they pay good

We have one of the original Superfund sites in my town of Ashland, Massachusetts. The Nyanza dye factory dumped all sorts of waste products for decades before being shut down. Now there's a huge field where they've sealed in most of the waste, and the owner of the property is looking at putting in a solar farm on the cap with wind turbines along the perimeter. It seems like a perfect site for that sort of development, and there's not much else that can be done with the property.

About a month ago, my girlfriend and I rode our bikes on the Cour D'Alene Bike Trail [friendsofcdatrails.org], that crosses the Idaho panhandle. The whole site is a toxic waste dump -- it was the old railway from a mine to a mill, and the entire length of it was contaminated with all sorts of nasty things. It's 130 km long, and it wasn't an option to just dig up a 130km long by 3 meter wide by 3 meter deep chunk of land. So what they did was they poured a bunch of clay on the top, and then put a nice fat layer of concrete and as

Some of these places could never be truly cleaned up. You'd essentially have to ship the top 500 feet of soil and rock of the entire areas to China or India, but even that's just moving the problem away from the USA.

Some of these places could never be truly cleaned up. You'd essentially have to ship the top 500 feet of soil and rock of the entire areas to China or India, but even that's just moving the problem away from the USA.

Why clean them up either? At least this policy abandons the idea that every bit of land should be returned to some sort of pristine state.

It's the same answer as for why nuclear power in general hasn't taken off. It's not all that cost effective. I can't find the link now, but I read about a study that concluded that a new nuclear power plant would produce electricity at roughly twice the cost of conventional plants. Of course, solar and wind energy really need subsidies to be cost effective too, but given that a nuclear plant would be politically far more difficult to push through, I think the decision to do solar/wind/etc is pretty reasonab

We're talking billions of tons of contaminated soil, water, radioactive waste, old landfills. What do you propose is done with it? Where is it going to go when they "clean it up"?
Personally, I love this idea. Renewable energy, and using otherwise unusable resources? I don't see what's not to like.

> We're talking billions of tons of contaminated soil, water,> radioactive waste, old landfills. What do you propose is done with it?

Why not build on the concept of the space elevator and "elevate" this stuff intoorbit on a trajectory into the sun? Seriously - why leave it on earth at all?The technology seems to be developing to make something like this plausible.

Why not build on the concept of the space elevator and "elevate" this stuff into
orbit on a trajectory into the sun? Seriously - why leave it on earth at all?
The technology seems to be developing to make something like this plausible.

Never know what might be useful down the line. There are projects right now to 'mine' the methane in landfills for use in energy production.

The workers will be exposed and take material home from the site, trapped in clothing for a loved one to wash.
Their shoes would also walk in material, exposing any children.
The the 15-25 year exposure time adds up.
But its not mommy or daddy who started work at 35 yo.
Start counting from 0-3 years and its lump or blood time around 20-40 yo.

(What I really mean here is that you can manage the clean up in such a way that the people doing the work clean themselves up before they leave the damn site, part of that is having them wear protective equipment)

Superfund site cleanup already typically includes protective clothing, i.e. bunny suits and respirators effective against organic solvents and heavy metals. You can buy the bunny suits (made of tyvek) for about $8 apiece, galoshes are about $30 per wearer and can be rewashed, respirators are $20 and last about three to six months. This is a totally solved problem, and you are ignorantly or maliciously spreading FUD. Either way, stop. You're only making an ignorant ass of yourself.

If we slide much further towards another depression, we might see some of these projects carried out as public works. It is in the interest of national defense to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Once upon a time in the 70's I worked in a factory that had high lead concentrations. Per OSHA requirements, we were provided (and PAID FOR USING) shower facilities, recieved company-supplied work clothing and safety gear, AND had regular tests for lead poisoning. Those who got poisoned were kept on the payroll and reassigned 'make-work' in areas where no significant lead was to be found, such as, mowing the lawn with mowers powered by unleaded gas and propane, running the shredder, manning the tool crib, e

I've been in the environmental remediation field for over 20 years. I'm somewhat tired of hearing of talk about "new technologies" to clean up waste. Despite the marketing hype, there really isn't much "new" that can be done, based on the basic physics/chemistry/biology, although improvements can and have been made.

Basically, if you have organic contamination, you can either destroy it by oxidation or reduction, remove it and put it somewhere else (preferrably in a more concentrated/lower volume form) or isolate it so nobody can be exposed to it.

For inorganic contamination, it's pretty much the same options, except the "destroy" part is fairly limited since metals are elments (but you can do things like changing hexavalent chromium to less toxic trivalent chromium for instance).

That's it.

Now, of course, there have been improvements in the destruction technologies, better ways to oxidize organics than simply burning them, for example. Chemical oxidation has come a long way, but it's still just oxidation. Reduction has seen great strides in anaerobic bacterial growth promotion, and the one truly new approach over the 20 years - zero valent iron to reduce chlorinated ethenes. And thermal technologies have been getting better and better in the "remove the stuff from the ground" category.

But these are all just improvements to the basic categories that have already been identified. And the basic challenge remains that for any of these to work (other than isolation), you have to get whatever magic dust you have in contact with the contaminants or it does nothing - that is almost always the toughest part.

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of innovation going on and to be done to improve these technologies, and they are being used more and more, and successfully I might add, in site cleanups. But thinking in terms of waiting for "advances in technology would make it feasible to clean up said billions of tons of contamination" just isn't considering the basic science.

Some days I wish I were in the semiconductor business. There, it truly seems that advances in technology are almost magic. Not so in environmental remediation.

What not to like: The possibility that some advances in technology would make it feasible to clean up said billions of tons of contamination... prevented from being used to clean it up by new infrastructure built on top of the contamination.

Yes, it's OBVIOUSLY better to pave over some pristine wilderness for the power plants and leave the polluted waste dumps accessible, in case at some future time the technology and multi billions of dollars are found to clean them up, so they can replace the pristine w

Because cleaning them is next to impossible or just too costly. We humans can fuck things up really well, so well that we can't always fix them afterwards.

Seems a better idea than cleaning them to whatever the maximum contamination level is by todays standards and then building houses on top. Ten years later the standards have been changed due to new research/etc and you have an entire suburb at above safe limit contamination.

One big drawback of lots of these alternative energy methods is space - you can build a nuke plant or a coal plant to provide the same amount of energy with a much smaller amount of space. Using land that is otherwise unusable seems a good idea.

And of course I'm sure the people/companies who own that worthless (in some cases negative worth since the cleanup costs dwarf the value) making lots of campaign contributions also helped.

I sometimes wonder if there is not nearly enough research going into what it takes to simply break down a toxic molecule into something less (or non) toxic.

Every chemical that can be created can be "un"created.But the standard treatment protocol for Superfund sites is to package up everything toxic and bury it somewhere else. I'm sure that suits some deeply ingrained desire we have to bury bad things but I'm not so sure it is the best thing to do from either a health or even a net energy perspective.

We'd be in a far better world if every chemical, before it was approved, had to have a process available that would completely remove it from the environment if needed. Think along the lines of catalytic converters.

After a certain point though, you end up with either very simple molecules or just crap like lead that you can't break down any more. A lot of effort went into gathering up some of the component materials and concentrating them together for whatever reason. Aside from reburying stuff in the ground (which if you think about it, is exactly what half the cleanup proposals are!) there isn't much that can be done with matter in such a simplified form.

Oh ffs why was this hidden by the posting system? I've got it set to not filter or hide ANYTHING and yet it still insists on FORCING me to be unable to see hidden posts until I click "parent" on an orphan post, and it won't let me move the "#full||#hidden" slider to unhide any.

Uhhh - you're trying to pretend that Obama has money to clean up all those sites, after several administrations have passed the buck, and done nothing? Get real. BTW - a lot of those sites are being cleaned up naturally anyway. Bacteria, nematodes, wildlife, sunshine, rain and wind all work to decompose and recycle a lot of the waste that has gone into the ground. Putting up something like a windfarm will tend to isolate those areas until nature has finished cleaning up our mess.

Clean up is just too expensive. Every wonder why you never hear about it on the US news?Heavy metals, PCB's ect?, they did not all just vanish in the dot com boom.
Better just to mix in good top soil, pave, take a few safe clean samples and build green tech on top.
Any workers on the site would be see as disposable as the original workers- long term staff, mechanics, engineers.
Residents are all ready gone or in cancer cluster.
National sacrifice area lite for you.

In about 500 years when they run out, sure, we will all be dead. But you fail to see that technology is always improving. While the parent is correct in saying that in 2009 renewable energy is not economically feasible, but by mixing together independently developed technology from other disciplines, in 30 more years it may be very feasible, all without wasting taxpayer money in a black hole of waste. The government has already put in as much funds as it needs because the seeds have already been planted. Co

Conventional energy is tax payer funded as well-to make it more "economically feasible" for private energy companies, if you look at the whole stack. Cherry picking just some of the costs results in skewed figures that just make it seem to be cheaper. Thousands of miles of seized land for transmission towers and natgas pipelines, with no recompense for the private party land owners that these lines and pipelines cross, decades of uranium research run by the taxpayers or subsidized into academia and private

Well, here in Germany there are lots of wind farms, and to be honest they have almost no personnel on them. Windmills and solar parks have very low maintenance costs - the only real personnel you would need full time would be perimeter guards (which the current sites need anyhow). From what I gather, this plan would be best on sites where clean-up is nigh impossible, like the toxic landfills. Places where the only real solution is to let them go fallow, or where even after clean-up remain unwanted, so why n

Srsly? Governments don't always have to calculate if something is economical, at least not in a narrow sense, because they are more or less the entity set up to deal with situations where private economic calculation is insufficient; but there is absolutely nothing stopping them from using exactly the same tools to evaluate a potential project's economic prospects that a private sector actor would.

One cannot know for certain that a given plan is economic until it is tried, sometimes things go better than

My God, what are you still doing here man? Don't you know that the evil New World Obama Administration can infect your mind through your Internet connection? Quick, log off now, run to the basement, and put on your tin foil body condom, before they turn you into a mindless socialist environment-loving green weenie!

Feel free to check back in 2012, it may be safe for you to come back on line then.

Not really. You do not need eminent domain to take contaminated sites. Owners of contaminated sites are usually praying that the government will take those sites off of their hands. You see, when you own land that is contaminated you are responsible for cleaning it up, and you can pay pretty hefty fines if the contamination spreads or affects the groundwater. There have been many cases where people will sell contaminated sites for negative money (i.e., pay money for someone to get them off their hands). So yes, the owners will be quite happy to give them to the government for free.

The concern is actually quite the opposite. It is possible that the Obama admin may use this program as a hidden subsidy. That is they may let owners of contaminated land off the hook for the clean-up costs and get the federal taxpayer on the hook for the clean-up costs. But in general it seems like a good idea as long as environmental groups watch the implementation carefully.

should be to retool half of Tonawanda (it's a small industrial city immediately north of Buffalo, for those who aren't from the area) to make the parts for those turbines. There's a GM plant there that currently makes car transmissions. I'll bet they could switch over to making turbine innards pretty easily. I'm also quite confident that there are vacant factories large enough to accommodate making the blades. Then, when we've got the parts built, they can be shipped up the Great Lakes to the windy part

If you owned a US wind farm corp what would you do?
The cost of making a turbine part in the US vs China/ next sweat shop nation with a fancy new factory vs an old US factory?
GM has the dream like option never to hire another US citizen yet keep the brand strong with small US flags..
In China if you make trouble/get hurt its a small pension, chat with a local official or prison farm.
The US is great for logo design, turbine design or sales, installation, ongoing work over life of the unit.

We make a bunch of windmills here in Indiana. Turns out the cost of transportation and installation is pretty high compared to the labor to make them. It's cheaper to make them closer to where they need to be installed.

Someone needs to mod you funny. Every toured a power plant site? Not the PR version of the tour, a real tour where you get a friend of a friend to take you around. They're not exactly the greenest industry in the world -- but they're necessary.